I made a cake that actually came out looking as good as I’d hoped!

Posted on Jun.14,2009

I like cake. Cake is indeed not a lie as far as I’m concerned. I don’t think I’ve ever made a cake I didn’t like. This is because the vast majority of cakes I make involve a Cake Doctor book whereupon I follow the easy instructions that are really just slight alterations to a tried and tested box cake. The rare times I make a cake from scratch, it’s generally a recipe from the internet where 2837923 other people have given the recipe a good rating. When making cake (and most baked goods, for that matter), I do not have the problems with authority that I have all the time with cooking recipes. I respect my cake superiors, following a recipe as much to the letter as possible, only veering off the beaten path with inconsequential things, of the “Hey, I’ll dump in strawberries!” variety. Mind you, I’ll totally ignore a recipe for frosting, or simply decide that it is in my power to make up a frosting recipe on the spot. However, as screwing up a frosting recipe really just means, “Hmm, it’s too runny…time for another cup of powdered sugar!”, tastewise it won’t matter too much. This is because sugar is delicious. It can still be a bad idea, however.

See, I have this Chocolate Cake Doctor book. In the back, there are a plethora of various recipes for frosting and icing and such. So I bake a cake, and decide to use the fluffy chocolate frosting. After following the recipe perfectly, it’s like a super-runny icing. So I dump in more powdered sugar. Then I dump in some more powdered sugar. After that, I added powdered sugar. The recipe was advertising itself as being super chocolatey. By this point though, it was like super sugar icing that is chocolate flavored. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you, it’s just a bit disappointing when you were expecting super chocolate.

As it turned out, this was not a problem. The frosting icing poured on great and spread out nice and smooth. Then, after it had dried, I accomplished an amazing feat. I actually made it look like I wanted it to, possibly even slightly better. See, I have horrible luck with frosting things. I’ll get all crazy and use a frosting I’ve never used before, and I’ll decide to try techniques I’m not all that familiar with. Then, when I get frustrated when things don’t work, I’ll throw a spatula in anger, getting frosting all over the ceiling, and then decide to make the entire cake blue as a consolation for not being able to make that perfect border. Anyhow, I really liked how this cake came out.

It took me a few tries to get that rose working, and it’s still not exactly the best rose. The frosting required multiple sessions of sitting in the freezer to get things to not get entirely too squishy on me. But persevere I did! Mmm…cake.

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